ly the weaker that stand
more in need of justice!

Labour is a law of the universe, and is not an evil. Death is a law of
this world at least, and is not an evil. Torture is the law of no world
but the hell of human invention. Labour and death are for the best good
of those that labour and die; they are laws of life. Torture is
doubtless over-ruled for the good of the tortured, but it will one day
burn a very hell in the hearts of the torturers.

Torture can be inflicted only by the superior. The divine idea of a
superior, is one who requires duty, and protects, helps, delivers: our
relation to the animals is that of their superiors in the family, who
require labour, it may be, but are just, helpful, protective. Can they
know anything of the Father who neither love nor rule their inferiors,
but use them as a child his insensate toys, pulling them to pieces to
know what is inside them? Such men, so-called of science--let them have
the dignity to the fullness of its worth--lust to know as if a man's
life lay in knowing, as if it were a vile thing to be ignorant--so vile
that, for the sake of his secret hoard of facts, they do right in
breaking with torture into the house of the innocent! Surely they shall
not thus find the way of understanding! Surely there is a maniac thirst
for knowledge, as a maniac thirst for wine or for blood! He who loves
knowledge the most genuinely, will with the most patience wait for it
until it can be had righteously.

Need I argue the injustice? Can a sentient creature come forth without
rights, without claim to well-being, or to consideration from the other
creatures whom they find, equally without action of their own, present
in space? If one answer, 'For aught I know, it may be so,'--Where then
are thy own rights? I ask. If another have none, thine must lie in thy
superior power; and will there not one day come a stronger than thou?
Mayst thou not one day be in Naboth's place, with an Ahab getting up to
go into thy vineyard to possess it? The rich man may come prowling
after thy little ewe lamb, and what wilt thou have to say? He may be the
stronger, and thou the weaker! That the rights of the animals are so
much less than ours, does not surely argue them the less rights! They
have little, and we have much; ought they therefore to have less and we
more? Must we not rather be the more honourably anxious that they have
their little to the full. Every gain of injustice is a loss to the
worl